Did you know that tumbleweed is known as Russian thistle? I learned that Russian thistle (Salsola kali) is believed to have arrived in the United States in the early 1870s in South Dakota in shipments of flaxseed.

Walking to downtown Carrizozo recently the day was windy, dreary.

Tumbleweeds rolled across my path while the sound of the dry, hollow wind filled my ears. I spotted tumbleweeds, a fire hazard, caught high in a tree, in carports, buildings and alleys.

Dried tumbleweeds tumbling across the screen are classic visual cues of desolation in Western-type movies. Common props in movie frontier scenes are these weeds. I felt I was in a movie set in my old hometown.

My spouse and I invited weekend visitors in our home to an after-lunch ride. We stopped at the tennis court where the facility was engulfed in the tumbleweed. The 10-foot high fence had a wedge of weeds where other weeds rolled over them and tumbled onto the court. While in awe of the tumbleweed invasion, we observed Joey Thornton, a town employee, in a weed war atop a bulldozer.

The baseball field and player shelters also were targets of the tumbleweeds. Allsup's convenience store parking lot was cleared of the weeds, which had blown against a neighboring building. Throughout the town, tumbleweeds were piled on fences, alleys, carports, between businesses and against shrubbery. Schlarb Road, a sea of tumbleweeds.

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We mused holding Carrizozo Tumbleweed tours, tumbleweed parades and queen candidates. Carrizozo was not the only place hit with the infestation. Petroglyph Monument, northwest of Albuquerque, Cannon Air Force Base and Clovis were in the tumbleweed news. Each Christmas season a tumbleweed snowman in Albuquerque rises along Interstate 40.

The tumbleweed is among the entries and illustrations in "Flowering Plants of New Mexico" by Robert DeWitt Ivey of Albuquerque. In his "Edible and Useful Plants of Our Region" section on plants eaten raw and as salads, he states that young tumbleweed shoots in a grass-like stage are bland and one of the best.

My Internet search led me to recipes for steamed Russian thistle with chicken broth, Jerusalem artichokes, onion, and watercress and tumbleweed with rice and jack cheese. Apparently, fresh tumbleweed can be frozen for use later. Cooked tumbleweed with salt and butter tastes like spinach, I read.

No wonder Carrizozo goats munch on the tiny tasty thistle.

Carrizozo tumbleweed tours could include a festival with carnival accompanied by treats including chile-flavored tumbleweed on a stick and chocolate-covered Russian thistle.